Cheryl Eddy

A dancer until the end.

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By Rita Felciano

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Michael Smuin photo courtesy of Smuin Ballet.

Michael Smuin, artistic director and founder of Smuin Ballet, died today of a heart attack while rehearsing a new ballet. He was 68.

Like few others, Smuin’s choreography reached far and wide. In addition to choreographing ballets, he also worked on movies, television, and Broadway. He won a Tony, three Emmys, and a Drama Desk Award; in 1983, he was honored with a Dance Magazine Award.

He was a member of American Ballet Theater and San Francisco Ballet (1973-1985), for whom he created ballets which attracted younger and new audiences. Famously, he opened one gala with a performance by hip hop dancers, probably the first time that this genre had been seen on an opera house stage anywhere. For his own Smuin Ballet he choreographed over 40 works in the last 13 years. He was known for his ebullience, unwavering commitment to his performers, and an ability to create dances which were always accessible and often innovative.

He will be missed.

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Allison Jay in Michael Smuin’s Carmina Burana, from the company’s Spring 2007 season. Photo credit: Tom Hauck.

The pigs are alright

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FILM Rejoice, fans of smart, sharp, genre-tweaking comedy: Hot Fuzz — the latest from Shaun of the Dead writer-director Edgar Wright, cowriter-star Simon Pegg, and costar–slacker extraordinaire Nick Frost — has arrived. Pegg plays a London supercop whose makes-everyone-else-look-bad ways get him shunted to a small town where policing is limited to underage drinking and escaped swans. Or is it? Hot Fuzz apes British cop shows and American blockbusters that take law enforcement to explosive levels, including the singularly silly Bad Boys II. Recently, I sat down with the trio to get the buzz on Fuzz.

SFBG Considering Shaun‘s popularity, do you think people were surprised you didn’t make another horror movie or a sequel?

EDGAR WRIGHT I think, because every film takes three years essentially to make, to spend six years of our lives on the same idea would have been a mistake. We have so many stories to tell that you just want to keep moving on.

NICK FROST Most of the [Shaun] characters died, as well.

SIMON PEGG Plus I don’t think we wanted to be specifically tied to one genre — even if we do comedies every time — and be known as the guys who do horror comedy. It would be nice to flip between genres and types of comedy as well.

SFBG I was watching the trailers before The Hills Have Eyes 2, and someone yelled out, "Shaun of the Dead!" when the Hot Fuzz preview came on.

SP I don’t think Hot Fuzz would have been such an easy sell over here if it had been our first film, because even though it ends up being much more American than Shaun of the Dead is, it’s also much more British than Shaun of the Dead is. What we’re kind of hoping is that the groundswell of support for that film, which seemed to take place mainly on DVD, will be the thing that brings people to Hot Fuzz. I’ve been amazed at how many people have seen Shaun of the Dead.

SFBG What do people say when they see you on the street?

NF [Noo Yawk accent] Hey, Shaun of the Dead, right here!

SP I ran into someone on the Sunset Strip who was wearing a Shaun of the Dead T-shirt. He was a bit stunned, and so was I. (Cheryl Eddy)

Hot Fuzz opens April 20 in Bay Area theaters. For an extended interview with its creators, click here.

The pigs are alright: talking with the creators of HOT FUZZ

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In certain circles, “from the creators of Shaun of the Dead” are powerful, powerful words. Rejoice, fans of smart, sharp, genre-tweaking comedy: Hot Fuzz — the latest from writer-director Edgar Wright, cowriter-star Simon Pegg, and costar-slacker extraordinare Nick Frost — is a worthy follow-up for the ever-growing cult of Shaun. Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London supercop whose makes-everyone-else-look-bad ways get him shunted to a small town, where crime is limited to underage drinking and escaped swans. Or is it? Hot Fuzz apes British cop shows as well as American blockbusters that take law enforcement to ridiculously explosive levels, including Point Break, Lethal Weapon, and Bad Boys II. Recently, I sat down with cinema’s coolest trio du jour (apologies to Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino, and Rose McGowan) to get the buzz on Fuzz.

Amen with a camera

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Divine messages are tricky, particularly for true believers who have no choice but to obey whatever directive the big G passes down. "God told me to!" can lead to heroic or comical or tragic ends; really, it’s a convenient excuse to do just about anything. For Richard Gazowsky, pastor at San Francisco’s Voice of Pentecost Church, the Lord’s message was simple if extravagant: "I want you to be the Rolls Royce of filmmaking."

Given that Voice of Pentecost is situated in an old movie theater and that Gazowsky received his vision in 1994 — soon after the then-40-year-old saw his first movie, The Lion King — this decree was not as surprising as it sounds. But as Michael Jacobs’s documentary Audience of One reveals, the quixotic Gazowsky has hit endless snags in his quest to be the next Mel Gibson (or George Lucas) with his "Ten Commandments meets Star Wars" epic, Gravity: In the Shadow of Joseph. It seems unquestioning faith can only go so far before naïveté, technical inexperience, and long-overdue rent get in the way.

Intrigued by Lessley Anderson’s Jan. 5, 2005, SF Weekly article on the church’s cinematic aspirations, Jacobs (at the time a newly rooted San Franciscan by way of Colorado) headed out to Ocean Avenue to take in a service. Before long, he’d found the topic of his first feature-length documentary.

"I walked into Voice of Pentecost, and it was like stepping onto another planet. I’d never seen anything like it: singing, dancing, falling down, speaking in tongues. I was really floored," Jacobs told me over the phone from New York City, where Audience of One (which premiered at the 2007 South by Southwest film festival and is slated for the 2007 San Francisco International Film Festival) screened as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s "New Directors/New Films" series.

Though Gazowsky’s production company, Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks (yep, it stands for "what you see is what you get"), has about 30 employees, the charismatic preacher was the natural choice for Jacobs’s primary subject. "The pastor [came] out and [updated] his congregation on the trials and tribulations of making this independent Christian blockbuster," Jacobs remembers. "I was immediately fascinated."

Having received his own calling of sorts, Jacobs asked Gazowsky and his congregants to appear in his doc. "I was really candid. I told them I’m Jewish and had no intentions of being a part of their church but that I wanted to observe their creation. I talked to Pastor Gazowsky about my philosophical approach to documentary and how I wanted to make an observational film. I wasn’t gonna use narration or come at it from a liberal or conservative perspective. I wasn’t gonna put it into the context of Christianity. I just wanted to make it as much cinéma vérité as possible."

Voice of Pentecost agreed to give Jacobs fly-on-the-wall access. For the next few months he captured WYSIWYG’s casting calls, stunt rehearsals, set-design meetings, and other bustling preproduction activities for a fast-approaching Italian location shoot. The footage comprises Audience of One‘s decidedly optimistic first half; anticipation runs sky-high among the (nearly all-volunteer) cast and crew despite several hints of challenges ahead. Gravity‘s massive wardrobe, including an abundance of Jediesque hoods, remains many stitches from completion, and the camera and sound equipment — at Gazowsky’s insistence, entirely state-of-the-art — is still being tested.

Soon before WYSIWYG uproots to Italy, one of the few pros involved in the production, cinematographer Jens Klein, tells Gazowsky he’s concerned about Gravity‘s abbreviated prep time. Something always goes wrong on the set, the experienced Klein cautions — and of course, it does.

By then Jacobs was "an inside outsider," his camera-toting presence a familiar sight. He traveled to Italy and documented WYSIWYG’s problem-plagued shoot. "I really did sort of blend into the scene," he says. "That relationship continued to grow and strengthen for about six months. When we came back from Italy, things got a little stranger. The lines got very blurry at times between subject and reality and responsibility and professionalism."

At first the blurry lines stayed off camera, and Jacobs’s cinéma vérité goals remained intact. For example, he helped the exhausted crew move stones before one of Gravity‘s outdoor scenes. "I saw them working so hard, and they weren’t getting anything done. I couldn’t not help them," he recalls. "All of a sudden, I was, like, ‘Wait a minute, what am I doing?’ That’s not my professional responsibility, but I have this personal thing here where I want to help them."

After the Gravity crew returned to the United States, they set up shop on Treasure Island, leasing an enormous film studio from the city of San Francisco. To Jacobs, and by extension the Audience of One viewer, it’s quite clear that the funding Gazowsky expects from a mysterious German source will never materialize. At one point he’s counting on $200 million — a huge amount for a Hollywood film, let alone an independent production created by unproven first-timers. Gazowsky’s faith in the Lord may be strong, but the faith he has in his investors is positively breathtaking.

His faith in Jacobs, however, wavers a bit. Midway through Audience of One, the WYSIWYG gang becomes increasingly paranoid that someone — Hollywood spies, perhaps — will try to steal its creative thunder; as a result, new security measures are introduced and Jacobs’s on-set freedom is restricted.

"It’s not in the film, but we sort of had an argument about it," Jacobs recalls. "I said to [Gazowsky], ‘If my film is about your film, what am I supposed to do?’ I remember leaving that day thinking, ‘The film’s over. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve got all this footage, and the story’s not complete.’ I was feeling pretty low about that."

A few weeks later, though, he was reviewing his tapes and had a revelation. Though WYSIWYG’s financial woes and creative differences among the staff had grounded Gravity, all was not lost for Audience of One.

"I realized, ‘Wow, this isn’t a film about filmmaking. This is a film about these people and specifically this one character,’ " Jacobs says. "I came back to them saying, ‘I don’t really care about your film anymore. You guys are the heart of my story, and it’s really more about you.’ I figured it would be a good way to engineer this paranoia into the narrative of my documentary, because that’s what was really happening — that was the vérité. They were trying to push everybody away, particularly me. Why can’t that be a part of the story as opposed to an inhibitor of the story?"

The tone of Audience of One reflects Jacobs’s self-described "celebratory and exploitive" approach to his subjects, about whom he remained "deeply ambiguous." This proved difficult with Gazowsky, who can be charming (he’s an intensely likable guy whose dare-to-be-great moviemaking approach is nothing if not admirable) and off-putting (he’s incapable of addressing WYSIWYG’s practical problems). "What’s so fascinating about him — and so complex and so frustrating — is how quickly he can go back and forth between being completely self-aware and being this visionary dreamer who’s crazy, if you want to call him that."

Gazowsky may have irrational moments in the documentary, but if there’s ever been a zeitgeist moment for faith-based entertainment, it’s now. There’s the obvious example of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004), which grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. Fox Faith has distributed at least three films (including 2006’s The Ultimate Gift) in the Bay Area in the last few months. And if you think San Francisco is too godless a city to support such releases, remember this: Voice of Pentecost is here, though its members hardly resemble the Harry Potter–hating evangelicals spotlighted in Jesus Camp, a 2006 Oscar nominee that shares Audience of One‘s secular-filmmaker-documents-Christians theme.

"Because this is San Francisco, these people are extremely creative," Jacobs says, referring to the Voice of Pentecost faithful. "A lot of them have been out in the world and experimented with drugs, and that’s why they’re trying to get back on God’s plan, as they call it. Most evangelicals see things in black-and-white, but in this group there’s a large gray area. I’ve never heard them say really harsh or judgmental things about others. They would much rather get out there and celebrate God and make a film."

With that in mind, Jacobs exercised restraint in the editing room. "That was by far the most challenging part of the film, because of that balance I wanted to create: Are we laughing with them, are we laughing at them? Is this funny because they’re naive or because they’re flawed like any human being? We definitely edited for laughs, but there are no cheap shots. The laughs are based around the folly of filmmaking, not based around laughing at their god. We have fun with the material and the people, but it’s not purely ridicule — it’s as much a celebration and an inspiration at the same time. More importantly, let’s let the audience make their own decision about how they feel."

So what does Gazowsky think of the film? As evenhanded as Jacobs tried to be, Gazowsky’s portrayal is not entirely flattering. From WYSIWYG HQ, Gazowsky — who’s still awaiting funding so he can finish Gravity, among other projects — said he found the film difficult to watch but appreciated its honesty. Seeing it was quite an experience, "because you’re watching the last few years of your life going up on the screen. And, of course, I don’t have control of anything — the way it’s edited is just the way it is. And I’m looking at it, going, ‘Boy, that is a crazy guy. Do I know him? Oh, it’s me!’ It’s hard to look at yourself, I would say."

Though Gazowsky has a healthy sense of humor, he’s 100 percent serious about his filmmaking aspirations. As Audience of One shows, he dreams big — maybe too big. (A firm believer that Hollywood has abandoned good storytelling, he cites Lawrence of Arabia as his favorite movie.)

"I feel Mike [Jacobs] was very sweet, but at the same time he did not fully understand what it is we’re doing. I don’t think anyone really looking on the outside understands it. And here’s the reason: it’s because everybody’s thinking there’s an angle somewhere and never realizes we really love movies," Gazowsky says.

Though WYSIWYG’s love of movies also includes a desire to make people "feel God — and what that means to you and me might be different," Gazowsky hopes he’ll complete a project that pleases not just the holy audience of one who set him on his cinematic path in the first place but also the masses. After all he’s been through — in Audience of One and beyond — he remains steadfast. "We really want to make the biggest film ever done." *

AUDIENCE OF ONE

Screening at the San Francisco International Film Festival

May 3, 6:30 p.m.; May 7, 12:45 p.m.; $10–$12

Kabuki Cinema

1881 Post, SF

(925) 866-9559

www.sffs.org

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One weird Easter

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I blame the cats. The Russian cats. The Moscow Cats Theatre. First of all, when the cat circus comes to town, I’m pretty sure there’s a law on the books that you don’t miss it under any circumstances. Actual performing cats! Kitties in little sparkly ruffs, scampering across high wires and jumping through hoops! Who passes that up??

Pretty much everyone I happen to know, it seems. I was already in a grumbly mood because I didn’t get a scrap of ham all day, nor did I even come near any sort of ham, or even spam — dude, I didn’t get corned beef on St. Patty’s, either, so the holiday-meat-deprivation pity party is only getting worse. On Thanksgiving I fully expect to be hunched over my Hello Kitty toaster, jar of Smuckers in hand, weeping over birds that are going uneaten. Yeah, I’m bitter. Feed me a cheeseburger, I’ll get over it. Anyway, the point is, I was already in a grumbly mood, like I said, when I hauled my carcass down to the Palace of Fine Arts. Alone. To see performing cats. Once I got there, I actually ran into some folks I knew — but the off-kilter tone of the day was already set.

Brothers in arms

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

In a vulnerable country occupied by a foreign power, civilian frustration leads to anger, which soon explodes into a violent, uncontainable insurgent movement. It could be ripped from today’s headlines — but The Wind That Shakes the Barley is set in 1920s Ireland, where the oppressors are the British and the rebels are members of the nascent Irish Republican Army.

Directed by Ken Loach (Bread and Roses) in his trademark naturalistic style (few close-ups, overlapping dialogue) and with immaculate attention to period detail, Wind makes the guerrillas sympathetic — to a point. But it’s also a film that avoids drawing strict boundaries; it exactly captures the uncertainty that arises when conflict and emotion become hopelessly tangled. At the beginning, brothers Teddy (Pádraic Delaney) and Damien (Cillian Murphy, the only cast member with a Hollywood hand stamp) know precisely where they stand. Tensions between British soldiers and Irish villagers are already sky-high when the young men are accosted by the Black and Tans for daring to hold a forbidden public meeting (really a harmless sporting match). Amid the shouting and gun pointing, an Irish teen refuses to speak his name in English, with fatal consequences.

With that first act of brutality, Wind ‘s tone is set. It’s war, and a dirty one at that. Damien abandons his med-school plans to join the fiery Teddy in his quest to drive out the Brits. As hostility escalates — humiliation, torture, and cold-blooded execution are the daily norm — Damien becomes more warrior than intellectual, a changeover that crystallizes once he’s asked to perform a terrible deed in the name of the cause. "I hope this Ireland we’re fighting for is worth it," he mutters.

But is it, at least for Damien? The affairs of state play out as you’d expect; for our benefit, events are explained via a newsreel the townsfolk watch in the local movie theater. The headline "Peace Treaty Signed by British and Irish Leaders!" is greeted first with cheers, then chagrin when it’s revealed the country will still be a dominion of the British empire and Northern Ireland will still be part of the United Kingdom. Clearly, there’s no way the bloody mess in the countryside will be tidily ended by a piece of paper signed by far-off dignitaries.

For Teddy and Damien, the ruling forces an impenetrable wedge between them. Teddy accepts the compromise, figuring he’ll work within the system to change it — for him, "this Ireland" is worth it. Damien’s actions during the war have pushed him to the point of no return; he has no choice but to keep fighting. When the brothers have their climactic clash, even their deep love for each other can’t overcome their political beliefs.

Wind was the Palme d’Or winner at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, a surprise victory for a movie that seems, at least on paper, to be about a pretty specific moment in Irish history. The tale of two brothers is admittedly an obvious storytelling device — check your Civil War cinema for other me-versus-him tales, or foreign epics such as the 2004 Korean drama Taegukgi: The Brotherhood of War. Wind ‘s leg up is its echoing of current events; you can’t help but watch the film through the framing of the nightly news. It could be in rural Ireland, it could be in rural Iraq, but fighting for freedom can take many forms, with all involved believing victory for their side will produce the only acceptable result. But what happens when the clear-cut realms of a battlefield mutate into the murky waters of courts, laws, and governments? To paraphrase Damien, it’s easy to know what you’re against — but another thing entirely to figure out what you’re for. *

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

Opens Fri/6 in Bay Area theaters

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

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To Helltrack and back

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FILM I had a lot of hope for Rad. Every month in BMX Action there’d be a new scrap of news about some top pro who was going to ride in the movie, including my personal favorite racer, “Hollywood” Mike Miranda. When photos of the Helltrack — site of the film’s climactic race — came out, you could lean your ear to the ground and hear the hearts of BMX groms beat just a little faster.

I watched the movie at Cinedome 7 East in Fremont with my buddy Dave. The opening footage of pro freestylers Eddie Fiola, Ron Wilkerson, and Brian Blyther killing it at Pipeline Skatepark seemed poised to fulfill the print hype, until we became aware of the backing tune, “Break the Ice,” by John Farnham: “Getting ready to break the ice / Feels like time is standing still / Aiming right for your heart / Getting ready to take another spill.” The Rad soundtrack was cheesy even in 1986, especially to a 15-year-old punk rock kid.

And the movie? Pure Hollywood schmaltz: local hero Cru Jones (Bill Allen) beats a corporate greed-meister at his own game. But more than two decades later, Rad wears a little better. For a movie directed by a stunt performer, it did hit the crucial themes of being a BMX kid: riding your bike all day, getting chased by the cops, jumping anything that crossed your path, and having big dreams about being one of the handful who could make a living at it. It’s no wonder old-timers on the chat boards at vintagebmx.com and os-bmx.com are constantly making Rad references. Rad is the BMXers’ Rocky Horror Picture Show. It got no love in the theaters, and it hasn’t officially been released on DVD, but it’s achieved timelessness as a cult classic. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

Over the phone from SoCal, Rad star Bill Allen talks BMX, berms, and bicycle boogies.

SFBG You had stunt riders doubling for you in the film, but had you been into BMX at all before you made Rad?

BILL ALLEN I came at it from an actor’s standpoint and not a BMX background at all. The ugly truth of it is my mother wouldn’t let me have a bicycle growing up, but of course I always rode my friends’ bikes and got into trouble anyway.

SFBG How was it working with the professional riders on Rad?

BA There were a lot of actual BMX guys from the freestyle and the racing worlds and a lot of stunt guys, and they pretty much all had the same crazy blood pumping through their veins. And I tend to hang out with stunt guys anyway, so it was a great time.

SFBG Did any crazy, unscripted stuff happen while you were filming?

BA I remember fooling around on the bike and nearly cracking my skull open just before I had to go do a take. Use those helmets. They really can save you. Also, I don’t know if many people know this, but in [Rad director] Hal Needham’s style of filmmaking, he’d start off a situation like Helltrack with half a dozen cameras or more and just let the guys go at it. So a lot of the stunts that you see are not stunts — these guys really are going down hard.

SFBG What was Helltrack like in person?

BA It was unbelievable. That first drop-off would give you heart attacks just standing there looking at it. And these were teenagers having to do these things, like going into that Kix cereal bowl and off the spoon. There were a bunch of little berms where I know at least one guy broke his ankle — really incredibly dangerous stuff that had never been tried before.

SFBG I’m sure a lot of people ask you about the bicycle boogie scene.

BA Oh god. [Pause] It’s [like] being beaten over the head with an ’80s stick. It’s just very indicative of that time period, and that’s not always a great thing, if it’s the ’80s we’re talking about.

SFBG What about the ass-sliding? Another classic Rad moment …

BA It was really cold, and they gave us these wetsuits which did zero good if you’re just gonna be in and out of the water. It was one of the less glamorous parts about the job.

SFBG When was the last time you watched Rad?

BA Probably 10 years. It’s hard for me to watch anything as an actor. You just wish you could change everything. But the racing sequences are stellar, and I guess that’s why people watch the movie time and time again.

SFBG Is it true that they’re thinking of doing a Rad sequel?

BA I think that’s one of those rumors that refuses to die. They haven’t even put the movie out on DVD yet, but people ask about [a sequel] all the time.

SFBG The time is ripe for a Rad revival — did you know that, for the first time, BMX is going to be a sport in the 2008 Beijing Olympics?

BA I did not know that. That’s incredible. That’s so cool! (Cheryl Eddy)

For more on Bill Allen, visit www.billallenrad.com; to sign the online petition for a Rad DVD release, visit www.petitiononline.com/RAD/petition.html.

 

Pleased to meat you

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FILM I was a vegetarian for 18 years — more than half my life. But after quite a bit of soul-searching (and one incredibly triumphant taste of bacon), I recently realized that 18 years was plenty long enough. The honest truth is that meat is delicious, and I enjoy the hell out of eating it.

Coincidentally (or not), the Donner Party included several Eddys. I have no proof that I’m related to the ill-fated pioneers, but I feel a certain kinship nonetheless. They were the ultimate carnivores, after all. I’m not alone in my fascination with cannibalism — why else would there be five Hannibal Lecter movies? Soylent Green is made of people; the living dead will eat your brains at any time of dawn, day, or night; and the biggest blockbuster of 2006, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, featured droves of flesh-hungry islanders. For every highbrow take on cannibalism (Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly Last Summer; song-of-myself doc Keep the River on Your Right; Japanese war drama Fires on the Plain; art house fave Eating Raoul; plane-crash saga Alive), there are dozens more glorifying the ultimate taboo with sleazy glee. Put on your eatin’ dress and consider these tasty standouts.

(1) The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (Tobe Hooper, 1986). The first Chainsaw is a hands-down horror classic. The sequel, which stars Dennis Hopper and is far more of a comedy, includes a subplot about a chili cook-off: "No secret, it’s the meat. Don’t skimp on the meat."

(2) The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977). When Wes Craven met Eddie Murphy when they made Vampire in Brooklyn, the first thing Murphy did was quote The Hills Have Eyes: "Baby’s fat. You fat … fat and juicy."

(3–4) Ravenous (Antonia Bird, 1999). The American frontier circa 1847 provides the backdrop for this tale; well worth it just for the cast of twitchy character actors such as Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Davies, and David Arquette. A good double feature with Cannibal! The Musical (Trey Parker, 1996).

(4) Blood Diner (Jackie Kong, 1987). Guess what’s on the menu.

(5) Frightmare (Pete Walker, 1974). And you thought your family had issues.

(6) Dahmer (David Jacobson, 2002). One of the finer entries in the booming serial-killer biopic genre.

(8–10) The Cannibal gang: Cannibal Holocaust (Ruggero Deodato, 1980), Cannibal Ferox (Umberto Lenzi, 1981), and Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, 1980). Nobody does human cruelty and bad-taste brutality like the Italians. (Cheryl Eddy)

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST

Fri/23–Sat/14, midnight, $9.75

Clay, 2261 Fillmore, SF

www.landmarkafterdark.com

State of the metal address

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If gnashing guitars, thundering drums, and growling vocals are suddenly silenced, will faces still find places to melt? It’s been five months since Pound-SF closed, after reportedly being evicted by the San Francisco Port Authority. (As early as May 2006, owner Tony Carracci spoke at a San Francisco Entertainment Commission meeting about his frustration at not being able to obtain a long-term lease for the space.) The all-ages club, tucked into San Francisco’s industrial bayside, hosted a large portion of the city’s metal shows during its five-year lifespan. The music may be thriving without the Pound, but what’s up with the local metal scene now that it has no sprawling, single venue at its hub, one that booked major metal touring acts and budding local bands, in addition to the occasional hip-hop or indie group?

Matt Shapiro, head booker at the Elbo Room and founder of metal club night Lucifer’s Hammer, has noticed a few changes. "Since the Pound closed, other people have had to step up. I was hoping that Slim’s would really pick up on it, and they’ve taken some of it," he says, adding that venues such as the Oakland Metro, Bottom of the Hill, and the Great American Music Hall have also begun booking more metal shows. However, he continues, "I’ve noticed that we’ve lost a lot of [metal shows], because a lot of the tours are skipping over the Bay Area now."

Leila Rauf, vocalist and guitarist for Saros, agrees that certain venues have increased their metal bookings to make up for the Pound’s demise. On the other hand, though, "places like Slim’s and the Great American aren’t going to book a band unless you draw at least 300 people," she says. "For smaller bands, that’s not really doable. There’s Balazo [18 Art Gallery] — we just played there are few weeks ago. But I definitely think we need another all-ages venue for smaller bands that’s organized and in a convenient location, because the Pound was kind of in the middle of nowhere."

Feo Berumen, vocalist from Arise, points out that other key metal venues — including the Maritime Hall and the Cocodrie — have shut down in the past and the scene has continued to flourish, though at a certain price. "It’s almost like the only people you’re cutting out is the underage crowd, which sucks," he offers. "The all-ages shows that Arise predominantly plays are up north, past Petaluma."

If the audience demands a Pound equivalent, it’s likely one will eventually emerge. Pete Ponitkoff, formerly of Benumb and now the vocalist for Agenda of Swine, has a suggestion: "I’m surprised somebody doesn’t take Broadway Studios and start having [metal] shows there again. That place would be an awesome replacement for the Pound."

No matter what happens, local metal hardly seems in danger of dying out. Rob Cavestany, lead guitarist of the influential Bay Area thrash band Death Angel — and a former Pound employee — has seen the scene change a lot over the past 25 years, with one proud constant. "The Bay Area metal scene is legendary in the metal world. Any metal fan, all over the world that we go, knows straight up, ‘Bay Area! You guys are from the Bay Area!’ They know it’s the scene that spawned Metallica, Exodus, Testament — some of the hardest-hitting thrash bands."

PLAY AT HIGH VOLUME: A SELECTED GUIDE TO BAY METAL


Agenda of Swine "The new big shit," Berumen declares.

Arise "As of recently, I’ve seen an influx of new, Bay Area thrash," Shapiro says, and Arise is one of his favorites.

Asunder From Oakland, this band got props from Shapiro, Ponitkoff, and Saros drummer Blood Eagle.

Dekapitator Witness the truth of their MySpace headline: "Head-splitting metal!!!!!"

Hatchet On Ponitkoff’s list of new favorites; bands like this make him say of the Bay Area, "We’re the thrash capital of the frickin’ world."

Ludicra Hammers of Misfortune’s John Cobbett plays guitar in this black metal band, guided by Laurie Shanaman’s eerie vocals.

Saros In an interview with Thrasher magazine, Rauf described her band’s music as "simultaneously complex and cyclical." And it rocks.

Saviours "Saviours are really making a name for themselves and touring constantly," Blood Eagle says. See their killer live show, and you’ll see why.

Watch Them Die "The band," Berumen says. "By far one of the best bands out of the Bay Area."

Wayward Son "Young kids who play some of the best goddamn thrash on the face of the planet," according to Berumen. (Cheryl Eddy)

Tale of two Valley Girls

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THE ORIGINAL It starts as a joke, but it rarely ends well. You pick up a piece of slang to make fun of it and then, at some point far too late down the line, realize you are physically incapable of putting it down. Who knew — I didn’t in seventh grade, when I first started using the word “like” as an irritating placeholder for nothing in particular — that Moon Unit Zappa and her dad’s joke, a song mimicking a youthful subculture’s garbled tongue, was also on me and my friends, 3,000 miles distant from Sherman Oaks, or that 24 years later I would still sound vaguely like a character from Martha Coolidge’s film Valley Girl?

My community of incoherents is a large one. The syntax has stuck around, and so has the film at least partly responsible for it — not to mention the threads sported on both sides of the film’s Hollyweird-Valley divide, which have now cycled back into fashion at least twice in the past decade. The streets of San Francisco are filled with stripy-shirted hipsters, Valley Girl is still being paid tribute at events such as Midnites for Maniacs at the Castro, and now the admirers who packed that house can even troop down to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for a screening that pairs OG VG with a low-budget homage directed by Michele O’Marah.

If you’ve seen the original, and I’m so sure you have, you know exactly why a crazed fan would undertake such an endeavor. Starring Deborah Foreman as Julie, the titular Valley girl, and Nicolas Cage as Randy, her tubular, dreamy-eyed swain from the wrong side of the Hollywood Hills, Valley Girl managed to gently send up a vapid ’80s mall culture while at the same time treating its viewers to a torrid new-romantic love story fueled by worlds colliding, the Plimsouls, and a song about getting it on mid–nuclear holocaust (Modern English’s “I Melt with You”).

Building on the can’t-fail tale of R+J, the film cruises the Hollywood club scene and sneaks into the tract homes of Tarzana and Van Nuys, coolly siding against a brand of teen robotics and materialism epitomized by middle-class girls running loose in the Galleria with their parents’ credit cards — yet admitting that they look “truly dazzling” in their string bikinis at the beach. Fittingly, or fitting-roomly, a shopping montage supplies the footage for the opening credits. But if shopping’s not your bag, try the “I Melt with You” montage, or the Randy-stalking-Julie montage, or lines like Randy’s “Well, fuck you! No, fuck off, for sure! Like, totally!” — an utterance whose consummate blend of anguish and hilarity never fails to secure viewer forgiveness for the admittedly shocking sight, early on, of Cage’s saltwater-slicked V-shaped chest hair. (Lynn Rapoport)

THE REMAKE When she was a teenager, Michele O’Marah’s favorite movie was Valley Girl — reason enough, as an adult, to mount a remake of what’s probably the most popular teen love story of the 1980s (non–John Hughes division). Or was affection the only reason? According to an August 2006 interview O’Marah did with the Web site Austinist, she created her homage as “a serious piece of artwork to be viewed in a gallery” addressing the film’s “serious issues — how a teenage girl thinks about herself, and how she thinks about men and how they should treat her.”

Whether or not this intention comes through is debatable. Fact is, the audience that goes to see a Valley Girl remake (even when it’s showing in a museum) is going to be largely composed of Valley Girl fans, who might let things like O’Marah’s charmingly homemade sets slide but will mutter among themselves when key details are altered. Why didn’t O’Marah direct the guy playing Tommy to make that crazy arm gesture after he knocks back a drink at Suzi’s party? Why are certain crucial lines jumbled beyond recognition?

The disconnects are all the more puzzling when you consider all that O’Marah gets exactly right. Her tweaks can be incredibly winning: Julie’s dad’s broken sandals — the “Water Buffalos” — are made of cardboard; a bewigged Plimsouls cover band offers excellent coverage during the Hollywood bar scenes.

O’Marah was clearly operating with a budget one-zillionth the size of the original’s, itself a cheap film by Hollywood standards. But if her lo-fi Valley Girl is to be taken as serious artwork, it raises a serious question: why remake something you love only to emphasize subtext over joy? In the 1980s a group of junior high kids devoted endless summers to a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. They had the same flagrant disregard for copyright laws as O’Marah but no pretensions whatsoever. Their product may have been technically rough, but it was also energetic and enjoyable. Thing is, when you start putting quote marks around quote marks, fun becomes work. To the max. (Cheryl Eddy)

FIDELITY AND BETRAYAL: VARIATIONS ON THE REMAKE — VALLEY GIRL

Thurs/22, 6:30 p.m. Valley Girl (Michele O’Marah) and 8:30 p.m. Valley Girl (Martha Coolidge)

Sun/25, 2 p.m. Valley Girl (O’Marah) and 4 p.m. Valley Girl (Coolidge)

$5–$7

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Phyllis Wattis Theater

151 Third St., SF

(415) 357-4000

www.sfmoma.org

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SFIAAFF: Freedom isn’t free

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Aside from one upbeat depiction of Hawaii’s only all-male hula school (Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula), the nominees in the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival’s documentary competition are nearly as similar in execution as they are in theme. Immigration tales, filmed in high-definition video from a first-person perspective, abound. Though homelands (Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea) differ, there’s remarkable commonality among the subjects, who display the kind of internal scars only great suffering can inflict. The need for closure is undeniable; the journey is, of course, captured by a lens that has no qualms about getting way up close and personal. On more than one occasion, the filmmaker wielding the ever-present camera is an immediate family member.

The strongest pair happen to be the two that are the most alike: Doan Hoang’s Oh, Saigon and Socheata Poeuv’s New Year Baby. Hoang was only three years old on April 30, 1975, the day her family scrambled aboard the last civilian helicopter out of Vietnam at the end of the war. She remembers only her middle-class life in Kentucky, but her family — including an older half sister who was left behind amid the chaos of their escape — remains very much affected by the past. Two return trips to Saigon open old wounds even as they strengthen bonds weakened by decades of resentment and estrangement. "I had not understood what he lost when we left Vietnam," Hoang reflects when her father explains that his "true home" no longer exists. Oh, Saigon is greatly elevated by her insightful narration as well as the film’s graceful editing.

New Year Baby, about Texas-raised filmmaker Poeuv’s Cambodian family, exactly parallels some of Oh, Saigon‘s threads of painful secrets, including arranged marriages and siblings torn apart by politics. In addition, it features a group trip back to Cambodia complete with tearful reunions and probing questions raised by a constantly filming daughter. Animated interludes stand in where archival footage can’t, such as when Poeuv’s sisters remember what life was like under the Khmer Rouge. It’s a sensitive, emotional film that — like Oh, Saigon — makes one family’s journey symbolic of what war can do to the innocent, both those who remain amid the conflict and those who attempt to reestablish their lives elsewhere.

Without a daughter behind the camera shooting The Cats of Mirikitani (by Linda Hattendorf), And Thereafter II (by Hosup Lee), or Bolinao 52 (by Duc Nguyen), you’d think these docs would play out on a less intimate level. Instead they’re just as harrowing — Lee’s film often uncomfortably so. With self-referential asides (including his fear that he’s exploiting his subject), Lee follows Ajuma, a Korean woman who describes herself as an "ex–American whore" who met her husband (an American soldier, now deceased) "in the fuck business." She’s lonely and friendless and speaks very little English, even after decades in the States. Lee isn’t quite sure what to do with her except capture her hard-earned bitterness on tape.

By contrast, Hattendorf basically adopts the focus of her film — 85-year-old Japanese American Jimmy Mirikitani — after Sept. 11. Homeless, he moves into her New York City apartment and grudgingly accepts her help (getting a Social Security check, finding housing, contacting relatives, etc.), never ceasing to skillfully draw landscapes, flowers, and animals, as well as scenes from his memories. In return, he allows her to uncover his life story, which includes a childhood in Hiroshima and a young adulthood spent in a California internment camp. As the shards of Mirikitani’s complicated biography come together (resulting in yet another return voyage, this time to a camp reunion), Hattendorf wisely keeps herself on the periphery of the proceedings. Yes, she’s a key part of what happens to him within the film — but Cats is first and foremost a portrait of the artist.

Sept. 11 also factors into A Dream in Doubt (about the hate-motivated murder of a Sikh man in Phoenix, Ariz.), and the motif of forced relocation surfaces again in Koryo Saram: The Unreliable People, about Joseph Stalin’s deportation to central Asia (now Kazakhstan) of ethnic Koreans formerly living near the Soviet Union’s North Korean border. But if you’re looking for the doc competition’s most horrific narrative, seek out Bolinao 52, a nevertheless gracious film that gets to the bottom of what happened to a group of Vietnamese "boat people" who attempted to leave their country in 1988. The trip turned tragic when the boat’s engine malfunctioned; though the refugees were starving and weak, a US Navy ship deliberately passed them by after forking over sundry supplies. Desperate, they resorted to cannibalism and possibly worse. As Nguyen observes, survivor Tung Trinh offers her account of the experience, travels to Bolinao (the village in the Philippines where the boat finally landed), and confronts one of the US sailors who was on the vessel that failed to stop. And if that kind of trauma can eventually lead to healing, there’s hope yet for the subjects of all the other films — not to mention the world as a whole. *

We are going to eat you!

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By Cheryl Eddy


› cheryl@sfbg.com

Director and cowriter Bong Joon-ho insists that The Host is not really anti-American, and I’d agree. More accurately, it offers an incisive take on US foreign policy, echoing 2004’s double punch of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Team America: World Police. The key difference is that The Host isn’t homegrown, so it’s not dabbling in self-satire. Instead, it reflects how an outside nation (in this case, South Korea) views the US obsession with controlling absolutely everything on the planet.

The Host approaches the theme by depicting how a foreign city in crisis reacts to a pudgy, galloping sea monster birthed by American neurosis. The film opens in the morgue of a US army base in South Korea, where the Yankee in charge instructs his Korean underling to discard hundreds of gallons of toxic liquid. "I hate dust more than anything," he explains, wiping dirt from the glass bottles. When his assistant protests, pointing out that the chemicals might end up polluting the local river, the American won’t listen. "Pour them right down the drain," he says.

The best part is that this really happened, kind of. A January 2005 Korea Times article reported the following: "A local appeals court on Tuesday sentenced Albert McFarland, an American civilian employee of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), to six months imprisonment, with the term suspended for two years, for instructing his subordinates to dump a toxic substance into the Han River in Seoul in 2000." The toxic substance was 227 liters of formaldehyde, which is more than enough to freak out environmentalists and probably quite close to the real amount needed to create some kind of monstrous Han River mutant — or at least inspire Bong to dream one up. It’s not as dramatic as Godzilla‘s nuclear birth, but it’s plenty sinister nonetheless.

The next American in the film surfaces right when the monster does. He just so happens to be an out-of-uniform US soldier who helps The Host‘s schlubby antihero, Gang-du (Kang-ho Song), brain the creature with a traffic sign. Turns out, thanks for nothin’, dude: as news broadcasts inform us throughout the film, the soldier becomes mysteriously ill with a virus attributed (by the US military, naturally) to the mutant. That the creature represents some kind of bioterror smacks of propaganda; it’s made all the more suspicious by the fact that Gang-du, who endured a face full of sea-monster blood, remains completely healthy.

The Host‘s central concern is Gang-du’s family, who spend the film frantically searching for the thirtysomething slacker’s much-beloved daughter after she’s snatched by the monster. Bong insists his movie isn’t trying to point fingers at any specific targets but instead is framing its conflict as more of an us-versus-them dig at society (see "God of Monster," page 58). But The Host does emphasize America’s meddling military presence in Korea. Who else would advocate such over-the-top quarantine and security measures, other than the country that won’t even let you stash a shampoo bottle in your carry-on? Who else would greet violence with violence, plotting destruction (without spoiling the plot, let’s just say even more dangerous chemicals are involved) and blithely ignoring peace-minded protesters? America … fuck yeah!

So far, no American fascists — you know, the people who got their knickers in a knot over the Dixie Chicks — have come out against The Host; presumably, Korean monster movies are far removed from any Fox News–fueled radars. A Wikipedia article on The Host pointed out a particularly amusing reaction, though: it seems North Koreans (memorably mocked in Team America) are diggin’ the film’s perceived slam against the United States. According to the cited Yonhap News article, dated November 2006, "North Korea gave a rare compliment to a South Korean blockbuster movie on Thursday, upholding its critical stance toward the U.S. troops stationed in the South and dubbing them the ‘monster of the Han River.’ "

It gets better: "’The movie portrays realistically and through impersonation that the American troops occupying South Korea are the monster that steals people’s lives and destroys their happiness,’ North Korea’s weekly magazine Tongil Sinbo said in its latest edition."

Obviously, Bong’s intention when making The Host was not to stoke North Korea’s already abundant hatred of America. (It’s a testament to the film’s huge home-country success that even its pop culture–deprived neighbors took note of it.) Still, the film makes an effective point about monsters who invade where they’re not wanted — and the undeniable amount of devastation they leave behind. That Bong wraps his message in the tentacles of a sea monster (and a damn enjoyable movie, to boot) makes it all the more potent. *

THE HOST

Opens March 9

Embarcadero Center Cinema

One Embarcadero Center (mezzanine level), SF

California Theatre

2113 Kittredge, Berk.

www.hostmovie.com

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God of monster

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At the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival — blissfully far from any rivers concealing flesh-eating aquatic life forms — I spoke (through a translator) with Bong Joon-ho, director and cowriter of The Host.

SFBG I’ve read that you make films you yourself want to see. Are you a fan of monster movies, and have you always been?

BONG JOON-HO I’m a fan of several monster films, but I was not necessarily fascinated exclusively by them. I admire John Carpenter’s The Thing and Steven Spielberg’s films — Jaws, for example — but they were not my sole interest.

SFBG The Host contextualizes its monster within a framework of social and political commentary. Was that something you planned from the beginning?

BJ I think it’s the tradition of this type of monster film to have political undertones. What’s interesting is that the first thing you see [in The Host] — an American researcher asking his [Korean assistant] to discard toxic chemicals — was based on a real story in [South] Korea. That incident gave me the idea for this film, because it actually happened and it had that political undertone. So it was very practical for me to start with that.

SFBG How do you think American audiences will view the film?

BJ It’s true that there’s a lot of satire against the American government, but I don’t think it’s as heavy as Fahrenheit 9/11! I worked with American artists [from San Francisco effects studio the Orphanage] while making this film, and when they read the script, they enjoyed it.

SFBG Can you talk a bit about the creature design and how it was working with the special-effects houses that contributed to The Host?

BJ The original design for the creature was by me and a Korean artist named Chin Wei-chen. New Zealand’s Weta Workshop made the model of the creature. Based on that model, the Orphanage created the computer graphics. There are 10 shots focusing on the head of the creature, and this head — it’s one-to-one scale — was created by John Cox Creature Workshop, located in Australia. So those 10 shots were the actual head of the creature, not computer graphics.

SFBG Both in close-up and at full-length, the monster’s appearance is impressive. But the ways in which the Korean and American governments react to its sudden appearance are almost more sinister than the creature itself.

BJ Definitely there is some kind of implication there, but the creature doesn’t necessarily represent the government of the United States. It’s everything combined: the social and political and the possible hardships that an ordinary family, like in the film, might suffer in daily life. The fact is, this family tries to save their daughter by fighting really hard against the creature. But society doesn’t support their efforts. What I tried to convey is the reality that in life individuals don’t get support from society.

SFBG For all its monstrous elements, The Host isn’t really a horror movie. There’s quite a bit of dark humor in the script.

BJ I wanted to add humorous elements, but it was not really intentional. It came out naturally. Like in my previous film Memories of Murder — which was based on an actual, really terrible serial-killing story — I managed [to include] some humorous elements. Combining the humor and fear, comedy and tragedy, that’s part of life. For me, that approach is more realistic than just focusing on one aspect.

SFBG What does the title The Host mean to you?

BJ The first meaning is the biological meaning — that the creature may be the host of a virus. If I expand the meaning of The Host, it also represents all of the evils of life — everything that suppresses the daily lives of ordinary people.

SFBG Will there be a sequel?

BJ I would be happy to see the sequels made, not necessarily by me but by other directors.

SFBG But no American remake, right? Promise?

BJ [Laughs.] I’d like to remain the original creator of The Host. (Cheryl Eddy)

A party pooper’s thoughts on ‘Inland Empire’

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by Jason Shamai

Sitting in the theater the other night, it was with both great relief and great sadness that I realized I felt zero obligation to work out what was going on in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. The movie practically dares you to be stupid enough to try, so I didn’t. At first all I felt was the relief — what a pleasure to let the movie’s New Orleans funeral procession of words, sounds, images, and performances roll along without having to ask the left side of my brain to do anything. By the halfway point, though, I was starting to feel cheated, either by my lack of a certain kind of attention, or whatever was missing from the film that justified that lack, or both.

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Hey Lynch — Shamai has you on notice.

Academy fight song

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First things fuckin’ first: I know I’m not the only film fan who’s still pissed about Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain in 2006’s Best Picture race. In fact, let’s change the subject before I punch the nearest preachy ensemble drama (look out, Babel!). Cinemaniacs actually have a bigger problem this year, with the prospect of an Academy Awards ceremony chockablock with predetermined winners. You might as well time your corner-store run during the Best Actor and Best Actress awards, cause there’s zero mystery about who’s gonna snag those trophies (this way you can actually watch the People Who Died montage for once). But who else will win besides Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren? Can we make it through four hours of entertainment-related programming without mentioning Anna Nicole Smith? And are there any showdowns worthy of honorary Oscar recipient Ennio Morricone’s iconic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly score?

Best picture: Surprisingly, who’ll go home with the biggest O is anyone’s guess. The choices are Babel (which won the Golden Globe), The Departed (a big-budget box office hit), Letters from Iwo Jima (stellar movie, but Clint Eastwood’s already got like 57 of these things), Little Miss Sunshine (the little indie that could?), and The Queen (a good movie made great by Mirren’s performance). I’m aiming at my Oscar dartboard (it’s taped on a Crash poster) and picking Babel. Or Little Miss Sunshine. Or The Departed. Yep, I’m useless.

Best director: If Martin Scorsese doesn’t win for The Departed, I’m shaving my hair into a Mohawk. Paul Greengrass (United 93) I could maybe live with. But if Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel) gets his mitts on Marty’s trophy, it’s Bickle time.

Supporting actor: Frankly, I’m just psyched that the Academy chose to nominate The Departed ‘s Mark Wahlberg (funny, bitchy) instead of going the predictable route with Jack Nicholson (over-the-top in a bad way; what the fuck was that Tony Montana scene about anyway?). Despite mutterings about how Norbit‘s hideous existence is gonna harm his chances, Eddie Murphy’s Dreamgirls comeback will prove hard to beat, what with the singing, dancing, and acting chops — and nary a fat suit in sight.

Supporting actress: It’s Dreamgirls‘ J-Hud all the way. Insert your own "and I am telling you" pun here. Think she’ll thank Beyoncé in her acceptance speech?

Foreign-language film: Pan’s Labyrinth is on a roll. Give Guillermo del Toro his much-deserved due. You know you loved Blade 2 as much as I did.

Original screenplay: Even with the hokey thing about the stag, The Queen, written by the havin’–a–banner year Peter Morgan, is pretty appropriately regal. But the superfreaky Little Miss Sunshine contains the line "Do what you love, and fuck the rest," which may be kind of a cliché but is endearing enough to win me over. Kind of like the movie itself.

Adapted screenplay: Wizard sleeves! Vanilla faces! Gypsy tears! Wa wa wee wa! Oh, all the nominees in this category are deserving, but if they don’t give this to Borat genius Sacha Baron Cohen and his crew, the Academy will have chosen wisely. Not.

Documentary: Al Gore will never be president, but he can win an Oscar. (Or at least his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, can.) He’s kind of like Ronald Reagan in reverse.

Costume: I almost want to say Curse of the Golden Flower, for the sheer fact that it made Gong Li’s knockers defy gravity. However, I think the sequin-per-capita rule applies here: Dreamgirls, you may not have snagged a Best Picture nom, but getting snubbed has never looked so glamorous. (Cheryl Eddy)

ACADEMY AWARDS

Sun/25, 5 p.m., ABC

www.oscar.com

>

Make your own toothpaste in Iowa, shave your armpits in San Francisco

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Tonight’s episode of ABC’s Wife Swap pits Iowa farm family the Haigwoods (apocalypse-fixated and obsessed with raw food, they even eat raw meat; the kids are home-schooled and spend all day working on the farm; they don’t clean their home because they think germs are helpful — and that manure can cure cancer) and San Francisco sophisticates the Hess-Webbs (neat freaks who eat out several times a week and put great emphasis on their clothing and appearance).

Naturally, the sparks (essential in Wife Swap, which teeters on culture clash and conflict) fly like it’s the Fourth of July.
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Brutal fucking movie

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

A corpse is a corpse, of course, of course. And no one can talk to a corpse, of course. Unless, of course, that corpse is brought to you by the famous Mr. David Lynch. In this case the corpse gets up and shuffles away, walking the earth like something out of a Samuel Beckett play directed by George Romero.

My thirty-three-year practice of the Transcendental Meditation program has been central to my work in film and painting and to all areas of my life.

"Are you looking for an opening?" Look over here, if you dare, and make your entrée through a tableau of rabbit-headed domesticity complete with sitcom-style applause and a laugh track inserted at decidedly odd moments. Entrances and exits are everything in Inland Empire, which takes place in a universe so slippery your front door may no longer open into your living room but rather into a dark alleyway — and your identity might change if you step through.

So in July 1973 I went to the TM Center in Los Angeles and met an instructor, and I liked her. She looked like Doris Day.

"You have a new role to play?" Yes, you do, at the place where evil was born; your creepy new neighbor is more than happy to warn you of your imminent danger even as you stride around the ornate mansion that you and your violently jealous husband occupy. No matter, though. That new role is your big break, and your star turn in On High in Blue Tomorrows could mean you’ve finally stepped over the threshold into that magical land "where stars and dreams come true." Not coincidentally, it’s also where evil was born — and where hammy Southern accents go to die.

I call that depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity. It’s suffocating, and that rubber stinks.

Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 fantasy is Lynch’s almost three-hour New Nightmare, both a film and a studio lot overrun with elliptical numerical references: stages 4, 5, 6, 32, and 35; page 57. Where are we? Hollywood or Poland? And what time is it exactly? Is it 9:45 or just after midnight? Is it real time or remembered time, those two warring temporal spaces at the core of so many film noirs? Douglas Sirk–ian blue tomorrows are always just out of reach, but this is a rare instance in which the answer It’s only a movie isn’t very comforting — both viewers and characters seem trapped in a hellish real or imagined world that Lynch himself can’t or won’t explain. One thing is for certain: if you’re running along the Walk of Fame, it’s safe to say you’re in danger.

It’s so magical — I don’t know why — to go into a theater and have the lights go down. It’s very quiet, and then the curtains start to open. Maybe they’re red. And you go into a world…. It’s best on a big screen. That’s the way to go into a world.

Oh yes, Inland Empire was shot entirely on digital video. And it’s not that fancy-shmancy digital either. No, it’s crap digital. But it’s glorious crap — at once making the horror more potently ugly and profane and lending it the quality of gauzy impressionism. By the 4,000th squashed close-up of Laura Dern’s twisted face, you’re thinking there’s nothing so grotesque as a degraded image — see YouTube, tweaked-out coverage of the Iraq War. Then Lynch’s digital expressionism rallies, the incandescent flares of pixilated light at the twilight’s last gleaming. Everything is illuminated unless it’s not. A cut is not a cut but rather a buzzing lightbulb; a long shot is not a long shot but instead a menacing corridor.

I love Los Angeles.

Delivering her lines like a long-lost relative of Maria Ouspenskaya in The Wolf Man and lensed and styled to look like a cross between Jane Wyman and an evil squirrel, Grace Zabriskie plays the ultimate nosy neighbor — one who inaugurates this pleasure and boredom zone by opening a window into the leading lady’s future. Her director has a digital-video eye for combinations of lemon and gray as well as cheap Pepto-Bismol pinks and barf tones — he can make a palatial mansion look as grim as Eraserhead‘s dead living room. This is a movie about the horror of set design, the terror of lamps. Lynch can’t help but look for and stare down the rabbit hole, that spot where it’s hard to disappear, that place just down the way, the space that’s tucked back, difficult to see from the road — the lost highway that connects to the dark hallway and the innumerable nooks and crannies of negative space. As always, he fixates on the sinister brutality in pop’s lexicon; this time, instead of candy-colored clowns tiptoeing into bedrooms, it’s hearts wrapped up in clover.

It was the light that brought everybody to LA to make films in the early days. It’s still a beautiful place.

Is Inland Empire really The Passion of Laura Dern? Yes, this is Dern’s movie, her face being cut up in nearly every scene ("brutal fucking murder," as one character puts it), and Laura, what do you make of it? Are you in there? A spotlight trained on you, long and lean, running horizontally through the night in silent slow-motion, then toward the camera, then fast, then screaming like Rita Hayworth in the mirrors at the end of The Lady from Shanghai, but for three hours. Come back, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Gene Tierney and Mary Pickford, Judy Garland and Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Fontaine and Natalie Wood, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe: Lynch wants to make you stars again! A coast-to-coast search will soon be under way for the shot-for-shot remake of Inland Empire.

And sometimes things happen on the set that make you start dreaming.

No doubt, as the fate-strapped actress Nikki Grace, Dern makes an exquisite corpse. Oh, wait — she’s actually Susan Blue, Nikki’s alter ego and the character she plays in her latest film, a Southern potboiler that also stars Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) as Billy Side. Susan wanders through her fever dream screaming desperately for Billy, who always seems to be around the next darkly lit corner but rarely materializes. As the giant talking bunnies say, it all has "something to do with the telling of time." Of course, Nikki and Susan might have just fused into some kind of Lynchian-Freudian beast. The infamous Lynch psychofugue. It’s an assumption borne out by a third Dern personality, a ball-busting broad with a mysterious bruise on her lower lip who permanently totes a rusty screwdriver.

What struck me about O.J. Simpson was that he was able to smile and laugh.

Dern’s performance is like a disco ball in a hall of mirrors; it’s rarely clear which character she’s playing, but she’s never less than entirely committed. One minute she’s a kittenish starlet, long legs stretched out across a sun-drenched gazebo. The next she’s a haggard has-been with a busted lip, climbing a set of dingy steps into a dark office, where she tells the man seated there — who is he exactly? And who’s he talking to on the phone? — about how she once thwarted a rapist by plucking out one of his eyeballs.

I don’t necessarily love rotting bodies, but there’s a texture to a rotting body that is unbelievable. Have you ever seen a little rotted animal?

"Hey — look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before." This line repeats throughout Inland Empire, and yeah — there’s definitely David Lynch déjà vu at work here: Mulholland Drive‘s twisted Tinseltown, Twin Peaks‘ slutty-girl world, Blue Velvet‘s dark suburbia, Wild at Heart‘s seedy glamour and endless Dern worship. Plus the inevitably singular moments: Where, before or since, has a splattered bottle of ketchup foreshadowed a murder? Committed on the exact square foot of cement that encases Dorothy Lamour’s Hollywood Boulevard star?

I love seeing people come out of darkness.

Just as it’s tempting to view Mulholland Drive‘s semiuseless dude passages as a simple opportunity for Lynch to spank Quentin Tarantino, this time around his humane take on Eastern Europe might be a genial yet hostile retort to Eli Roth. The director himself won’t say anything about his movies or their influences — he’ll never fess up that Mulholland Drive is essentially Carnival of Souls moved from Salt Lake City to showbiz central, even if one of Inland Empire‘s most terrifying moments echoes the zombies-running-at-the-camera shock tactics of Herk Harvey’s 1962 cult classic. (The scariest Dern close-up adds more voltage to the peak jolt of Takeshi Shimizu’s video version of Ju-on, which goes to show, what comes around goes around.) Inland Empire‘s new capitalist whores might be talking with or back to the ones in Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever and Ilya Khrjanovsky’s 4, a recent movie with an amazing sound design overrun by Lynchian subsonic rumbles.

Fellini had me sit down. He was in a little wheelchair between two beds, and he took my hand, and we sat and talked for half an hour…. That was Friday night, and Sunday he went into a coma and never came out.

Inland Empire is more than long enough to have some dodgy or cringeworthy moments, which include a fair amount of bad acting by models, the jarring soundtrack misfire — rare for Lynch — of Beck’s "Black Tambourine," and a final lip sync of Nina Simone’s "Sinnerman." No one can double for the late Dr. Simone! But Dern, her dirty strands of hair looking like facial wrinkles and bruises, can double over endlessly. By the time she’s on Hollywood Boulevard, caught between a young female junkie and a homeless untouchable calmly discussing how to get the bus to Pomona, she’s suffered a shattering fall from the confines of her lavish, hermetically sealed estate in the recesses of the Inland Empire (both the one in her zip code and the one in her mind).

I went to a psychiatrist once.

"You gotta swing your hips, now. Come on, baby. Jump up. Jump back. Well, now, I think you’ve got the knack. Now that you can do it, let’s make a chain, now. (Come on baby, do the Loco-motion.) A chug-a chug-a motion like a railroad train, now. (Come on baby, do the Loco-motion.) Do it nice and easy, now, don’t lose control: a little bit of rhythm and a lot of soul. So come on, come on, do the Loco-motion with me."

So I say: Peace to all of you. *

All the sentences in italics are from Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, by David Lynch (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006).

INLAND EMPIRE

Opens Fri/9

See Movie Clock at www.sfbg.com

www.inlandempirecinema.com

>

Your life is calling

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Just outside Las Vegas sits a solitary phone booth, as isolated as the restaurant at the end of the universe. Despite its unlikely location, it’s a magnet for lost souls; they appear at odd hours to pounce on the ringing receiver and chat with Greta (Shani Wallis), a mysterious, husky-voiced dispenser of advice and moral support. The stories of four loosely connected characters drawn to the booth form the framework of John Putch’s Mojave Phone Booth, a rather classic low-budget, HD-shot indie that still manages to avoid cliché as it explores lives facing varying degrees of desperation.

"I’m bothered by all this tape," Beth (Annabeth Gish) tells Greta, referencing the boundless magnetic strips she’s noticed littering the landscape. But the line also foreshadows Mojave Phone Booth‘s recurring theme of recorded troubles. When Beth’s car is broken into several times in a single month, she huddles in the backseat with her camcorder, intent on capturing the thief in the act. When Mary (Tinarie van Wyk Loots) agrees to sleep with sleazy Barry (Steve Guttenberg) for cash, she’s horrified to discover he plans to videotape their encounter. Michael (David DeLuise) preys on naive Glory (Joy Gohring) — girlfriend of suspicious Alex (Christine Elise McCarthy) — offering suspicious close-contact "treatments" and an audiotape he insists will help scrub away the aftereffects of her perceived alien encounter. Finally, sad-sack Richard (Robert Romanus) pines for estranged wife Sarah (Missi Pyle), going so far as to make a home-movie compilation of their few blissful moments.

Some of these folks find happy endings. Some don’t. But all make their way through life with Greta’s guidance — though the film does conclude that face-to-face interaction, without the barriers of recording devices or telephone wires, is the key to relationship building. This view holds true in Cutting Edge, Bill McCullough’s entertaining slice-of-life doc about a Harlem barbershop that serves as a symbolic and literal "nexus of all black male life" for its patrons.

Cutting Edge is an HBO-produced doc, so its title doesn’t exactly extend to the filmmaking style, and it clearly riffs off the expected perception of such establishments as hubs of good-natured trash-talking, thanks in no small part to flicks like Barbershop. But the subjects — including the co-owner, who rightfully refers to himself as a "barber-psychologist" — are entertaining and unguarded, and the film successfully makes its point about the shop’s cultural and community importance above and beyond hair care. Sure, coifs come up in the endless stream of conversation, but they’re hardly the shop’s sole raison d’être.

But nowhere is a sense of place more delineated than in Sean Meredith’s paper-puppet take on you-know-which classic, Dante’s Inferno, which features a Dante (voiced by Dermot Mulroney) who finally unseats Clerks‘ Dante as the biggest slacker named Dante in filmdom, and an underworld tour guide in the form of Aeneid scribe Virgil (James Cromwell). At first I was worried this film would consist of too much sleepy voice-over and distractingly crude animation, but I was so wrong; as Dante and Virgil descend through the circles of hell, Meredith throws in biting, up-to-the-minute jokes that are both timely (randy Catholic priests, pushy Fox news reporters, militant airport security guards) and just plain funny, as when mythical ferry captain Charon appears rocking a headset mic and a bullhorn in the name of Hades-bound crowd control. *

The ninth annual IndieFest takes place Feb. 8–20 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roxie Film Center, 3117 16th St., SF; Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th St., SF; and the California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge, Berk. Advance tickets (most shows $10) are available at www.sfindie.com.

Abandoned planet

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› cheryl@sfbg.com

Read Kimberly Chun’s interview with Werner Herzog here.

I thought for sure the next Werner Herzog movie I’d be writing about would be Rescue Dawn, a harrowing POW drama (and a remake of his 1997 documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly) due out in late March. But here’s a nugget of très Herzogian weirdness to tide you over: The Wild Blue Yonder, which first screened locally in conjunction with the director’s 2006 San Francisco International Film Festival appearance. Is there any other filmmaker so prolific and creatively diverse working today? Find me one, and I’ll tie on a bandana, retreat to the woods, and name foxes after myself. "Everything that has to do with movies, I love," Herzog imparted on that fateful day at the Castro Theatre amid a discussion that also included a reference to WrestleMania (which he brought up multiple times).

That tacky influence isn’t evident in Yonder, dubbed "a science fiction fantasy" onscreen. The pseudodoc plays like 2001: A Space Odyssey crossed with What the Bleep Do We Know? (not to imply that it sucks as emphatically as the latter, but there are certain similarities). Unlike many experimental works, it has a narrative throughline, with Brad Dourif as an agitated refugee from another galaxy. Seems the "alien founding fathers" traveled to Earth when their home planet — a watery wonderworld with communicative wildlife — started dying. As it turns out, attempts to colonize Earth were less than successful. "We aliens all suck," Dourif’s unnamed pioneer laments, pacing in front of what was to be the alien version of Washington, DC (really some abandoned buildings huddled in a forgotten rural wasteland). "We’re failures!" Meanwhile, human astronauts strike out on their own exploratory mission, ironically earmarking Dourif’s homeland as a possible annex for our civilization.

The notions of a ruined planet and a population desperate to survive play both ways, of course — no matter who the native or the alien is. Herzog’s theme of environmental preservation is further underlined by the remarkable footage he uses to illustrate the abandoned planet, taken beneath ice caps in the Antarctic Ocean. This strange environment could be outer space, and indeed it offers a dreamier take on interstellar travel than the actual NASA footage Herzog uses, of shuttle astronauts in polo shirts and tube socks going about their zero-gravity business.

As Dourif’s voice-over grows more mournful and confrontational, a handful of real-life mathematicians step in for talking-head duty, explaining, among other things, the positive aspects of chaos, the concept of interplanetary superhighways, and theories about colonizing space. One PhD imagines the best way to help humans acclimate to outer limits would be to build a giant shopping mall in space — effectively obliterating anything resembling a fresh start for a population that has nearly ruined itself through overconsumption. Thing is, he’s probably right.

At the SFIFF, Herzog explained that he’s "too Bavarian" to make the Robert Johnson doc that’s been on his mind. But he’s not one to shy away from daring music choices; The Wild Blue Yonder‘s eerie, otherworldly mise-en-scène is heightened tenfold by Ernst Reijsiger’s haunting avant-garde score. If aliens ever do make it to Earth — if they’re not already here, that is — and they’re in the market for a documentarian, they need only see Yonder to know Herzog has the necessary cosmonautical chops. *

THE WILD BLUE YONDER

Sun/4–Tues/6, $5–$8.50

See Rep Clock for showtimes

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

>

The devil wears Nolan Miller

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TRASH TALKING BIO, TAKE ONE There are so many exquisite moments in steward Desmond Atholl’s tell-all that tells all. This ain’t no roman à clef, in other words; it’s a cutting, richly detailed, tension-filled diary of overseeing the Marlo Thomas–Phil Donahue household. Neither my favorite chapter title (“Free to Be … Me Me Me”) nor my favorite existential dilemma (“Each day as I rode up the elevator, I wondered, ‘Will I be greeted by Joan Crawford or Joan of Arc?’ “) comes close to my favorite anecdote, spilled in the ominously titled Chapter 26, “Who’s Got the Cookies?” Seems Marlo’d gathered her posse (which included Gloria Steinem) for a cruise on the couple’s yacht, the Mugsy (named after Marlo, of course). An oversight by the chef results in a snack smorgasbord that omits Marlo’s favorite dessert. “Nooooooo cookieeeesssss!!!” she screeches at Atholl. “No fucking cookies?” His reaction: “I had an irresistible urge to laugh, overwhelmed by the absurdity of the situation. Standing before me was an adult woman throwing a temper tantrum over some forgotten cookies…. I had visions of her floating through the sound, screaming to the seagulls, the fish — any creature that would listen — about her lost cookies.” After reflecting on his knee-jerk desire to spank her, he punch-lines by referring to the That Girl star as “that cookie monster.” And mighty tasty too. (Eddy)

TAKE TWO For anyone who’s been kicked while down, been laid low by an overbearing boss, or simply had to cope with some behemoth beeyatch, That Girl and Phil is the dog-eared paperback to keep by the bedside. Laugh yourself to sleep — or into a tumescent fantasy state over what you might poison-pen someday. My fave excerpt centers on Atholl’s primo turf — party planning — his sympathy for Thomas’s put-upon hubby, and a post–yacht cruise soiree for staffers on the 20th anniversary of Donahue. A disagreement over whether to sufficiently water the guests with cocktails turns into one of the volume’s more memorable tiffs:

“D-E-S-M-O-N-D!!!”

It wasn’t difficult to locate the source of the scream. Marlo was in the dining room glaring at the buffet, her face pale and contorted. “How dare you serve cold cuts in my house!” she exclaimed. “It’s just so low class and common! And white bread and pickles! And, my God, meat lasagna!! Fucker, you’ve done it again!!!”

Tired of her constant abuse, I replied, “Miss Thomas, please do not use the F word in my presence. It is not a word I am accustomed to hearing. In fact, I find it quite offensive. Phil requested this buffet, and these were his explicit instructions.”

Marlo pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and loudly announced so that all the help could hear, “Take no notice of Phil! He knows nothing about being graceful! And never, never serve cold cuts in my house again! Even if the guests are common enough to eat them!”

Later, waiters hired for the evening express astonishment that the hollering hoyden could really be that beret tosser they had seen on TV. Atholl’s response: “Television is just a fantasy. This is real life!” Drama queens, start your sheep. (Kimberly Chun)

TAKE THREE I was a Borders book-shelving slave, making certain that Fiction, Mystery, and the all-important Film-TV-Radio sections maintained a sterile, organized-by-robots appearance. I did my time in the pre-Amazon, halcyon early days of the business, before it even chain-snaked out of Michigan, back when there were a mere two or three stores. (Oh woe, the lost income opportunities.) Somewhere up near the top of my overstuffed grab bag of Borders memories is the day the hardcover version of Atholl’s That Girl and Phil arrived. Anytime I was literally on my knees with a new batch of Leonard Maltin guides, I could reach over, and there was that girl — looking like she was going to jump out of her skin and race mad-skulled toward me! Nothing cured the Borders boredom of shifting the same books a few inches up and down the same shelves better than a quick look at Atholl’s huffily related tales of cold-cut and cookie rages and a glance at photos of his subject in full-on maniac mode. The only thing funnier: the day one of Paul Harvey’s mass-market paperbacks arrived with a printing error so extreme that the cover photo made him look like his face was melting from nuclear fourth-degree burns. And that, my friends, is the rest of the story. (Johnny Ray Huston)

 

Live free or die hard

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KIDS’ TV GONE WILD There’s a scene in Half Nelson — a top contender for most depressing scene in a movie loaded with ’em — in which Dan, Ryan Gosling’s drugged-out high school teacher, trudges home for a meal with his post-hippie parents. As the evening shuffles into boozy awkwardness, his mom throws Free to Be … You and Me on the hi-fi, and the sounds of "It’s All Right to Cry" fill the house. It’s the perfect choice for so many reasons; for Dan, a product of the 1970s, any song off that iconic ’72 album would signal bittersweet nostalgia. But the Rosey Grier–crooned "It’s All Right to Cry" — which follows the skit "Dudley Pippin and the Principal," an intense two minutes packed with sand table–tipping drama and flute-playing guidance — is also the pitch-perfect choice for an educator on the downward spiral.

I’m also a child of the 1970s. When I was in high school, a friend made the casual observation that everything he needed to know in life he’d learned from Free to Be … You and Me. And that’s basically true, isn’t it? If everyone took the lessons of Free to Be literally, there would be no gender stereotypes. People would share a lot more, and they’d be kinder to grandmas, parents, and crybabies. My favorite Free to Be cut was always "Ladies First," penned by Shel Silverstein (himself an avalanche of nostalgia material, what with Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, The Giving Tree, and the rest). Read by Free to Be‘s guiding force, Marlo Thomas, it’s the poignant tale of a greedy girl who learns it’s not always best to be first in line — especially when the line ends at the dinner plate of a hungry tiger.

I didn’t realize until years later — when I read That Girl and Phil, poison-penned by her former majordomo Desmond Atholl (with Michael Cherkinian) — that the sweet-voiced Thomas was so worthy of being a tasty tiger snack herself. The knowledge adds a certain cynical slant to lyrics such as "In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman." Her own bitchy woman, that is. It’s unclear whether the artists participating in "Free to Be … You and Me Invitational," the first in the PFA’s "Together Again: Collectively Created Compilations" series, take the personality of Free to Be‘s figurehead into consideration. Curated by Thomas Beard (who’ll be there in person) and Nick Hallett, the 55-minute program features fresh takes and mashups of original 16mm copies of the 1974 Free to Be film by video artists such as Big Noise Films, Nao Bustamante, and Lynne Sachs. Intriguingly, the program also features a short "joint jest" that takes on Mary Worth, one of the more inscrutable soap opera comics ever to take up funny-page real estate. (Cheryl Eddy)

FREE TO BE … YOU AND ME INVITATIONAL

Wed/17, 7:30 p.m., $4–$8

PFA

2757 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-5249

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

>

We accept you — one of us!

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I’ve been at the Guardian awhile — it’ll be eight years next month, in fact. I started as a fresh-faced, eager intern, and since 1999 I’ve met many other fresh-faced, eager interns, intent on careers in media or academics or giraffe-tending (for real! If you’re out there, intern-who-reviewed-movies-but-was-also-a-zookeeper, email me and let me know how you’re doing.) But I’ve only known a few who were determined to segue from film writer to filmmaker — and one of ’em was Dina Gachman, who just finished her graduate thesis film at USC.

Surreal genius

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Are Kasper Hauser’s members the funniest people in San Francisco? Just try not busting a gut over the sketch troupe’s new SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy from a Plane, a takeoff on the SkyMall catalogs you find on airplanes. An uncanny takeoff. It’s stuffed with lovingly photographed faux products (including Our Safest Electric Jungle Gym, a steal at $599.99) and excessively cheerful copy (for the Racial Globe Toaster: "Press any country, and your toast will toast to the shade of its inhabitants’ skin!").

If you’ve seen Kasper Hauser live, you’ve witnessed their ability to write sketches that mash up the familiar and the absurd. And then there’s Kasper Hauser’s Web site, www.kasperhauser.com, which further showcases their talent for injecting surreal elements into a variety of media: short videos ("A Solution for Male Camel Toe") and the popular Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast, plus a takeoff on Craigslist that’s equal parts bizarre and hilarious. The busy comedians are also working on a pilot proposal for Current TV.

As the quartet prepared for SkyMaul-themed shows at both the Chicago and San Francisco Sketchfests (local performances are Jan. 17, 19, and 21), I visited KH HQ in the Mission, where Dan Klein, Rob Baedeker, James Reichmuth, and John Reichmuth — former Stanford classmates who’ve been performing together since 2000 — chatted about parody, creativity, and the importance of staying staunchly San Franciscan. (Cheryl Eddy)

SFBG Have you noticed that audiences have more awareness of sketch comedy, given the rise of festivals like SF Sketchfest? Or do people still want to yell things out like it’s an improv show?

JOHN REICHMUTH I don’t really like to use the word sketch very much because it usually gets a bad reaction. That is what we are, but people take that as sort of a euphemism for "quick and undeveloped" and "over the top." "Zany." We hate the word zany — random, zany, silly. Those are just words that mean that the person did not watch you. [Other members laugh.] I think that each city that has a sketch fest has seen [awareness of the form] grow. Clearly, it’s happened in San Francisco; what you have is an audience with much more clearly defined expectations.

SFBG What can audiences expect from this year’s show?

ROB BAEDEKER With SkyMaul, we adapted material from the book and then used some old characters and sketches and sort of cobbled together a show that’s new in most ways.

JOHN REICHMUTH It’s a narrative about the company, the imaginary [SkyMaul] company, but it’s surreal like we are. It just sort of transcends time and space and physical laws.

SFBG How did you come up with the premise for the book? Obviously, everyone who’s been on a plane has seen a SkyMall catalog.

DAN KLEIN We’d fly to festivals, basically, and we’d grab the SkyMall….

JAMES REICHMUTH We would write captions above [the photos] and try to crack each other up.

KLEIN We have a great book agent, Danielle Svetkov, who actually came to us and said, "You guys gotta have a book in you somewhere." When we gave her the proposal, we had two offers in two days.

JOHN REICHMUTH We also started the proposal with the words "fuck you." [Everyone laughs.] It said "Fuck you. No, I’m serious. Fuck you — that is such a great idea."

BAEDEKER That was all in quotes, and then it said, "That’s what people say when they hear that we’re working on this book."

JOHN REICHMUTH That is actually how we pitched it. The first words of our pitch were "fuck you." But one of the things that we deal with now is wanting to make sure people read the book — we don’t want people to think that it’s just funny photos but to find the little gems in the writing.

SFBG Anything that didn’t make it into the book?

JAMES REICHMUTH Our publishers suggested very few changes contentwise. There were two products that they said no to: al-Qaeda action figures, which I’m sure someone has done, and the "One True Cock Ring." But that was more of a Lord of the Rings copyright thing.

SFBG You’ve obviously found ways to channel your creativity into a variety of avenues, not just live performance. How has living in San Francisco influenced you?

JAMES REICHMUTH As a comedian, staying in San Francisco is to really choose to have a different kind of career. The biggest choice you make as a comedian is to not move to LA or New York.

JOHN REICHMUTH It takes you off this track where you’re waiting for someone else to validate you or make you into a star or something. You just make your own business. You create something different.

SFBG You’ve performed in SF Sketchfest every year since its inception. What’s your take on the festival?

JAMES REICHMUTH If you look at the lineup now, it’s one of the best comedy festivals in America, without question. Their ambition every single year is astounding, and it’s all Dave Owen, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton who just make this happen. The thing that’s so great about it is that it’s not just sketch comedy — it’s basically everything but straight stand-up. And straight stand-up is the one kind of comedy that everybody in America has seen way too much of. So anything they see at the festival is bound to be surprising to them as well as being at least as funny as anything they’ve seen before.

SFBG When you’re writing, do you have a pretty good sense of what’s going to be funny to an audience?

KLEIN There have been a couple of things that have made all four of us laugh over and over and just — if the audience doesn’t laugh at some point, you just gotta give up and move on.

JAMES REICHMUTH It’s pointless to say something like "Well, that audience didn’t get it." It’s either a success or a failure. Finding your audience is one thing, but it’s, like, they laughed or they didn’t. We try to avoid being hack or cheap —

JOHN REICHMUTH Or topical.

JAMES REICHMUTH In the end, it’s just all about laughs.

KLEIN If you can get the whole audience, then you get them crying and laughing so hard they’re spitting on the people in front of them.

JOHN REICHMUTH As a comedian, I think getting people to spit stuff out is number one. *

NOISE: “Tennessee, you’ve been good to me”

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mindysmith1.jpg

I first encounted Mindy Smith on VH-1 Country, of all places — it was a video for her cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” (with the divine Ms. P providing backing vocals), which matched Smith’s unfussy, dulcet voice with a mournful, almost eerie arrangement. Notably, she tweaked the chorus and made it her own, adding a lilt to the fourth “Jolene” in the refrain as she begged for mercy from the auburn-haired siren (in the video, caught mackin’ on Mindy’s man in a car in the woods). The follow-up single, “Come to Jesus” — from her Vanguard debut, One Moment More — suggested a more Johnny-Cash-finds-religion kind of Christianity than Bible-thumping zealotry, a theme that lurked around the edges of the album with references to angels and the like. Other lyrical topics included her mother’s death (the moving “One Moment More”) and the country throwback “Train Song,” about a woman waitin’ on a lover who’s left her lonely — and more than a little pissed about having to tend “all this shit” he left behind.

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